Oracle Blog

by Sin-Yaw Wang

Last Flight

June 7th started a complicated itinerary, I actually did not fully comprehended the complexity before I left home. The plan was to attend a graduation, work for several days, take a vacation, visit a customer in Seattle, kept several connections warm in Taipei, and come back to Beijing. All within a 3-week span. Busy, tight, complicated, but not really unusual for someone who travelled 13 times in 2007 and earning the sad UA Global Services status 3 years in a row.

Things changed drastically after the plane touched down. The company that was pursuing me turned up the heat and I accepted their offer. I read the blog, How to Quit, I wrote long time ago. Next day, I tendered my resignation.

Jeff asked for time to handle the event and I obviously obliged. I started planning for the communication: family members first, of course, Sun contacts, business contacts, and probably social contacts last. I started to list them in each category and anticipated the speed of rumor propagation, known to be faster than light. Since those lists are quite long, I wrote a small program that essentially spam them. (I considered using PHP/MySQL, but ended up coding in Scheme and simple text lists.)

Planned meetings became awkward. I skipped several internal meetings and kept most of the external ones. I tried to cut my Taipei stop, but kept it for economical reasons: changing the flight costs more than just hang-out for two nights.

When the announcement hit ERI, my inbox exploded. Many messages touched me deeply and made me so grateful for these 3 years Sun gave me. I read some messages many times. It could be a good thing that I am not in Beijing.

When I wait for the flight at the Hong Kong airport, the finality hit me: this is the last trip. I am returning home the last time. Next time I come, it will not be the same anymore.

Sin-Yaw, three years ago I translated your blog entry "how to quit" into Chinese. Today I went back and read it again, and deeply moved by your words. Although you are leaving Sun, you are well respected because you are departing in such a professional way. It was sad to see that someone in Jeff's staff disclosed the information too early, which was, highly unprofessional.